It's pretty easy to look at news nowadays and think that the world is heading down the toilet. We can see wars, protests, diseases, and economic failure, and we can conclude that things nowadays must be bad. But these are largely political and social events and we've always had them. There's another way to look at things, and that is looking at the individual. I ask NSG, do you think people are becoming nicer?
There are a number of ways to look at this. There are a number of factors to consider. Attributing all of this to human behavior may be generalizing it. I acknowledge this as a possibility, so keep that in mind as you read through this.
During the entire 20th century, from the Boer Wars to the Chechnyan Wars, only about 3% of all human deaths in the world could be attributed to these man made conflicts. Meanwhile some evidence suggests that as many as 13% of Native American hunter-gatherer remains had died from trauma. The Mongolian Invasions were perhaps the second most destructive conflict in history, having killed 11% of the world's population. The Thirty Years War wiped out 1/3 of Germany's population. What's more is how these wars are fought. It's a myth that civilians are more likely to die in modern conflicts. In fact it isn't even legal to kill them. Once civilians were openly targets, and were the spoils of war. Soldiers were encouraged to loot and pillage, because they could. Nowadays civilians aren't targets. Back then they were prizes. The way war is conducted has also changed this. For example armies used to live off the land, ransacking farms and foraging for food. This for example is what caused so many deaths during the Thirty Years War, civilians had nothing to eat. The fact that supply trains exist now has eliminated the factor responsible for so many civilian deaths.
It is also a myth that there are more wars nowadays. There are more wars that you hear about nowadays. It seems now that you can talk to almost anyone about the Syrian Civil War, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or the violence in Sudan. But look at this list of wars from the 20th century. How many do you know about? How about a list of conflicts from the 19th century? How informed were people back then? An American back then couldn't watch CNN and learn about the Russo-Persian Wars. So the idea that there are more wars nowadays is an illusion created by the fact that it is easier to learn about world events. You can argue that war is easier. You can argue that insurgencies and rebellions are on the rise over conventional wars, but there are not more wars.
Wars are an easy indication of how violent we are, but we can also look into culture and society. Homicide rates are down across the western world. It has fallen by 90% since the 14th century (when punishments were harsher). One academic study found that modern kids TV shows contain 4.8 violent scenes per hour, compared with nursery rhymes with 52.2. Then there are the myriad forms of violence that were once the banal backdrop of daily life. One game in feudal Europe involved men competing to head-butt to death a cat that had been nailed alive to a post. Gladiator fights and jousting are more obvious ones.
Across the world there is less tolerance of civilian deaths. Even when the superpowers fail to respond to violence half the world away, their citizens still protest. Even when it does occur, such violence needs to be justified. Nowadays it seems that billions of dollars worth of lobbyists, PR firms are necessary to tone down the public reaction. Gone are the days when school children are taught nursery rhymes about protecting the fatherland. Genocide was, in a topic we explore frequently, a way of waging war. The bible speaks of it. “thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth” — Deuteronomy 20:16. The Europeans didn't think of it as wrong to exterminate the Native Americans. That attitude was inherited by their successors. “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely in the case of the tenth.”, said Theodore Roosevelt winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Did the Romans ever sympathize with the peoples they conquered? One out of three Romans was a slave. When Alexander the Great and Timur created their empires they were remembered as conquerors. When Hitler and Hussein created theirs they were remembered as villains.
Civil rights have increased across the world. Now more and more the world come to accept the right of women and gays. It only took 10,000 years of human civilization. How long have women been considered property? It differs from culture to culture, but in many cultures women were effectively not treated as people. Religions across the world tend to exclude women from meaningful positions, even now. Most republics throughout history, including most western ones until the 20th century, forbade women from voting or holding government offices. Women frequently couldn't own property or slaves. People back then thought that this just the way things were. Modern cultures consider it barbaric. This is just speaking of the legal problems. The social segregation of women (which is subjective and I will not go into it) extends much further than that. Gay rights are another example of how tolerant society is increasingly becoming. Although not actively persecuted in all societies across history, modern western society has come to view it as wrong. It is only hundreds of years later that society's views have begun to change at a snail's pace. Animal rights, child abuse, and racism are other examples of things that our modern world is focusing on, that went ignored for hundreds of years.
But even on an individual level people are changing. Aside from the aforementioned homicide rate, violent crime rates are down across the world. Surely across developed countries. Although cyber bullying is a new problem, bullying is declining. Society cares more about bullying. Once it was considered a part of life. Now it's a serious crime. Millions of dollars go into preventing it. Assaults and physical harassment has significantly declined. The world is safer. Even our general views of what is and isn't acceptable have changed. This is getting into territory that is difficult to source, but I would argue that individuals are less likely to ever commit violence. Where as it was once acceptable to punch someone in the face for assaulting you, it is now less acceptable to engage in violence even with provocation. Compare that to hundreds of years ago, such as when Anglo-Saxon law permitted killing if the victim had insulted the murderer.
So I do think that humans are becoming nicer. Why? I don't know. There are so many factors. But this isn't about getting into those. This is about if you agree with this. Do you think that the world is becoming nicer? There could be factors here that have nothing to do with human behavior. Education, increasing wealth, globalization. All could contribute to this more than just a change in society. Freud argued that all humans were inherently violent and savage creatures. If that were true then we would still have our violent urges, even if they are covered up. This wouldn't be the same as people actually changing. do you believe this? What say you NSG?
Sadly I can't source all of this, but I can provide the articles.
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/2 ... ention-not
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/ar ... eens-study
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/opini ... nicer.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wir ... ming-nicer
